Mindful Living in a Time of Covid

 

Many of us wake up today to the new normal: churches, mosques, synagogues and temples closed; restaurants, bars and theatres closed. Even parks and home visits off limits. In response to my blog last week some people have asked that I say a little more about the ‘mindful living’ I mentioned earlier. I am happy to do this if it will help us to come through this extraordinary and unprecedented situation.

Accordingly I take as my ‘text’ a verse from the 2,500 year old Sanskrit ‘Svestasvatara Upanisad’, chapter 4, sloka 6:

dvā suparṇā sayujā sakhāyā samānaṃ vṛkṣaṃ pariṣasvajāte / tayor anyaḥ pippalaṃ svādv atty anaśnann anyo abhicākaśīti

[personhood] is like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, perched on the branch of the same tree.

One of them tastes the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree; the other, tasting neither, calmly looks on.

I mentioned in the last blog our ‘animal’ reaction to the covid crisis: fear, anxiety, the need to get enough food, protect loved ones etc. This is the bird that ‘eats the sweet and bitter fruit’. Edith Stein, the 20^th Century German philosopher calls it the ‘me-self’. Sigmund Freud and his followers call it the ‘ego’. And it is important. In fact many branches of depth psychology are called ‘ego psychology’ as they help us to develop and strengthen the ego. Many spiritual practitioners today talk of ‘getting rid of the ego’. Which is a) not possible and b) probably not desirable anyway... There are two birds on the branch - we cannot kill two birds with one stone! Rather the ego must continue to eat its bitter and sweet fruits – rushing around trying to get enough protective kit, cans of soup and avoiding all contact with everyone else. This is a survival strategy that is part of our make-up. Note that this bird has ‘golden plumage’ too – it is just as important as the other bird...

          But all the time the other silent bird looks on – this is what Edith Stein and others call ‘the soul’. It is the eternal part of us that can observe silently what happens in the ego. Now, this is the part of the self that is normally hidden in our day-to-day lives. In fact for most of us it often only a crisis – a bereavement, unemployment, sickness – that can enable it to emerge. Well we have a big crisis now – in fact all three rolled into one. Now is the time to listen to the song of the silent bird (as St John of the Cross said). As we sit at home or out on our solitary walks let us devote 10 – 15 minutes each day to listening to this song. Why not dedicate the traditional time of sunrise and sunset to this practice? From this perspective we can begin to redress the balance in our personalities – away from the ‘me-self’ to the soul.

          One last thing. I mentioned in the previous blog the Sanskrit notion of the ‘tirtha’ or ‘crossing place’ and suggested we are at such a crossing place now. As well as a physical crossing place – a pilgrimage – the Sanskrit texts talk of ‘tirthas of the heart’. There are six of these ‘crossing places of the heart’: truth, charity, patience, self-control, love and wisdom. As we stay at home with our loved ones and family, as we interact with each other in the coming weeks and months, let us aim to nurture these six qualities in our social interactions as we move into the mystery we are all being invited to enter.

          Yesterday I was able to work in the garden, planting vegetables for the new season and sowing the first seeds of the season on a bright spring day. As I watched the inevitable renewal of the earth I remembered some of the last words of the Viennese composer Gustav Mahler in his ‘Song of the Earth’, written as he was dying of heart disease in 1909. I shall finish with these, thinking and praying for us all:

The well-loved earth everywhere and always

Blossoms again in spring and grows green anew!

Everywhere and always the horizon glimmers blue...

Forever... Forever... Forever...Forever...

 

A Covid Lent with Job and William Blake

 

‘Then Satan answered the Lord: ‘Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse you to your face.’ The Lord said to Satan: ‘very well, he is in your power, only spare his life...’

Job 2: 4 – 6

 

The Book of Job is not my usual reading material but I regularly ponder on William Blake’s famous illustrations for the same, given here. In these unprecedented times it seems right to return to these monumental sources. This Plate, Number 6, illustrates Satan returning to earth to give plague and pestilence to the upstanding, moral and seemingly undeserving Job. Blake fills in the edges with illustrations suggesting that not only Job’s health is ruined, but also his economic wellbeing and comfort – thistles grow, creepy-crawlies abound and the yard is littered with rubbish and broken potsherds. Things are looking bad for him. His wife lies mourning at his feet whilst Job lies paralysed in agony, not even able to turn his palms upwards to accept this willingly.

Yet, as always with Blake we need to look at the details and catch the allusions he is giving us. The main clue is in the accompanying quotation from the Book of Job:

‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb and Naked shall I return thither –

The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.’

The fact that this quote seems to be hymned by a chorus of tiny whirling demons only adds to the mystery.

There are more clues in the engraving. There amongst the broken pots and rubbish are frogs and locusts... Now we begin to see the allusion. Blake is pointing us to the other time God’s destroying angel sent a plague – the Book of Exodus and the plagues sent to Egypt. Now we begin to see them all in Blake’s engraving – locusts, frogs,  Aaron’s broken staff turned into a snake, those little demons again - don’t they look like the gnats and the flies? -, Job’s boils, the darkness, the thunder and hail... And immediately we know where all this is leading. To the final great plague God will send on to the Egyptians – the Passover and the killing of the first born:

‘For I shall pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals...’ Exodus: 12.12

This is all strong stuff and perhaps not what we want to think about during the present crisis but is not a deeper truth being shown to us? The plague, or Covid 19, is it not a sign, a signifier? The Sanskrit term is a ‘Tirtha’ – a ‘crossing place’ – from the ordinary world to the transcendent realm. All of a sudden, without any preparation we have been given a crossing place. Our ordinary lives have been turned upside down as Satan appears to dance grinning over our prone society. Yet, Blake appears to give Satan a halo and was he not instructed by God himself to undertake this act? At present Christians are also engaged in the sacred preparations of Lent - deliberately and consciously preparing themselves for the ‘great crossing’ that will happen in Holy Week as they move through the suffering of Christ’s passion and death to the resurrection of Easter morning. Is this then not part of our Lent? We are being asked to let go of our ordinary attachments and prepare ourselves for the great deliverance that we are assured will come to us.

The incident portrayed here, as signified by Blake with an enormous setting sun, is just the beginning of Job’s ‘night sea journey’. He will have to suffer many more trials before the sun will rise again: psychological and spiritual as well as physical and material. It seems as though we too are just entering a ‘night sea journey’ as the sun goes down on our everyday routines. I pray that wherever you are, however you are facing this event, that, in solidarity with each other we approach it as mindfully as possible, aware that, as the Upanisads say, we have ‘two selves’. One that is basically selfish and will want only to fight for our own survival, but also another, the transcendent part, that will be able to cope with this, reflect upon it, and perhaps, like Job, eventually achieve Wisdom through mindfully facing the inevitable suffering we are all about to undergo.

God bless

 

Peter